


Unspooling (The Black and White Remix)

by justbreathe80



Category: due South
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-15
Updated: 2009-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbreathe80/pseuds/justbreathe80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser hadn't had occasion to see many films in his childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspooling (The Black and White Remix)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for remix_redux 2007. Remix of elishavah's Happy in the Dark.
> 
> MANY thanks to synecdochic for the early read-throughs and really helping me to figure out how to make this work, and to brooklinegirl for decision-making help and the beta!

Fraser hadn't had occasion to see many films in his childhood.

Moving around from one tiny settlement to the next with his grandparents was not exactly conducive to the luxury of a great deal of time in darkened theaters, but rather time on the ice, alone. When he was eleven, they moved to Inuvik and stayed for a couple of years. That was the first time Fraser saw a movie.

Mary Kaguliak, who ran the general store and was responsible for ordering the films from Vancouver, had an affinity for black and white Katharine Hepburn films, and so Fraser spent one Saturday evening a month for those two years watching _Bringing Up Baby_ and _The Philadelphia Story_ and _The African Queen_. They showed the movies on the large screen (which was also ordered and arduously shipped from Vancouver) in the front of the church, and the pews would quickly fill in with what seemed like half the town.

At that age, Fraser had a rather vague idea of what else people did in movie theaters, but he was always much more interested in seeing the movie than kissing in the back row, like Jeanie Smith and Bobby Keelut did for all of _Suddenly Last Summer_. Still, Fraser couldn't help but turn around and glance at them every once in a while - Bobby's hands tangled in Jeanie's wavy, blonde hair, Jeanie clutching at Bobby's jacket. They looked like they were enjoying themselves, but Fraser thought nothing could be as good as the black and white images flickering up on the screen, Katharine Hepburn talking, smart and brassy. Beautiful. The way he remembered his mother being, from his own, fading images and his father's infrequent stories.

During the long, dark winter when Fraser was twelve, the Smithbauers moved to town, and he and Mark became fast friends. He dragged Mark (who would much rather have been out on the ice, playing hockey) to the movie every month, and they sat there, watching raptly, pressed close to each other in the packed, hushed pew.

Fraser could remember the exact moment when he met Steve McQueen on the screen, incredibly handsome and vibrant, like the Arctic summer flowers that announced the return of the light, completely magnetic in force. It was _The Thomas Crown Affair_, and he was watching, totally engrossed, except for the times when he shifted his eyes slightly to look at Mark through the darkness, whose eyes were also trained to the screen, unblinking.

They watched, the room hushed, until the chess scene. Fraser felt something, something altogether strange, pooling bright and hot in his belly as he watched Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway move the black and white pieces around the board and stroke them with their fingertips. It was not until Mark's hand came to rest on his knee and he felt a jolt that he realized what it was. He could feel his face turning red and hot, intensely grateful for the the dark sanctuary. Mark's hand never left his knee, and right before the credits started, he thought that he felt Mark's fingers stroking him, like he was a black knight.

It was in that moment that he realized, with sudden clarity, why the teenagers craved the relative privacy of the dark as they did.

They spent the winter and the spring, the sun creeping higher and higher in the sky every day, never missing a movie, and Fraser didn't have to coax Mark off the ice anymore on those Saturdays. Over the next few weeks, they migrated closer to the back of the church, and Mark threaded his fingers through Fraser's and held on, safe in the faint, uneven light of the movie screen.

Fraser was thirteen, and anticipating the moment when he and Mark might do what Jeanie and Bobby had done - kiss in the back of the theater, hold onto each other that way. But then Fraser's grandparents told him they would be moving in several weeks, and all of Fraser's carefully planned scenarios of what he and Mark would do in the dark quickly evaporated into the constant night sky.

As it turned out, they shared their first kiss in the brightly lit privacy of Fraser's bedroom, the sun coming up strongly outside the window, the morning before Fraser and his grandparents moved on to Tuktoyaktuk. It wasn't what he had expected, what he had hoped for all of those Saturdays, although it was lovely in its way. He pushed away his sadness over the thought of all of the potential Saturdays they were not going to have.

*****

When Fraser was eighteen, he moved to Regina, to the Depot, and it was like any other place he'd been in the last five years in that he didn't fit in, not at all. While his classmates went out to the brightly lit bars in Regina on the weekend nights, when they were allowed leave, Fraser found himself alone, seeking out older movie theaters downtown, theaters that mostly showed the same movies that he'd grown up with. The only ones he knew.

He spent almost all of his free time (and money) while in Regina in the dark of the movie theater, letting himself get lost in ridiculously overblown romantic tales spooling out across the screen, and thought that the one positive thing about leaving home, leaving the North, was that he got this - this dark, satisfying anonymity and escape, every week, instead of once a month like in Inuvik. Back at the barracks, no one ever asked him where he'd been, and he never said, because it was just his, and his alone.

People kissed in the back of these theaters too, he noticed - teenagers not much younger than Fraser was at that point, but living completely different lives. Ones seemingly without his responsibilities. Fraser caught glimpses of them out of the corner of his eye, making out their shapes as the images flashed across the screen, paired off and clasped in embraces, but he kept his eyes mostly forward.

*****

Moving back to Inuvik, after spending years posted in various, remote places, places where the winter nights were interminable and quiet, was both good and bad at the same time. He had gotten used to being out on the ice, the mountains towering and shadowing the fields, to not seeing another living creature, human or not, for days or weeks at a time, and Inuvik had grown in the years he had been away. It was a little bit disconcerting, to see it become a real town. Still, it felt unaccountably good to walk down the street and have people _know_ him, to see him, after so many years of no one knowing him at all.

To his surprise, Inuvik had a movie theater now, a real one, not just Mary Kaguliak's shipments from Vancouver, but Fraser couldn't bring himself to go. He wanted his memories of sitting with Mark in the pews of Our Lady of Victory left untarnished and whole, and so despite feeling drawn to lose himself in the dark of the theater and the implausibility of the stories, he stayed away.

*****

It was only a few days after he'd returned to Chicago to find that his whole world had been turned upside down - a few days after the first, confused, spiraling time Ray Kowalski had asked him to dinner - that Ray turned to him, as they headed out of the station house, and said, "Hey, Frase, you wanna go see a movie or something?"

He didn't know how to tell Ray that he hadn't seen a movie in almost fifteen years and that he hadn't seen a movie that was made since 1970, but he already felt so utterly mixed up and in the dark still that all he could do was nod and agree, and let Ray pick the movie.

It was a terrible, loud action film, with fast-flying images and horrific violence and surround-sound that hurt his ears. Fraser must have flinched visibly, enough that Ray could make it out in the semi-darkness of the overly-sanitized multiplex theater, because they never went back again. Ray watched him the whole way home that night, Fraser catching him looking out of the corner of his eye as they drove through the dark, quiet streets. The next day, Ray told Fraser about some older, more intimate theaters downtown that showed art house movies and old films, and Ray always urged Fraser to choose the movie from that point forward.

They spent one evening of the weekend, every single week, in the shadows of an old movie theater. Fraser wasn't entirely sure that Ray enjoyed the movies that Fraser chose, but he seemed to be content, sitting still and keeping his eyes focused straight ahead, clear, crystal blue in the shadows. Ray always got popcorn, something Fraser had never had in a movie theater before, and moved the bucket over so that Fraser could reach in and help himself, which he surprised himself by doing quite often.

It was a Saturday night, and the theater was mostly full. It was a good movie - an independent film from Canada, although Fraser found himself hard pressed to prefer any contemporary film above those from his childhood. They just weren't the same. Fraser reached into bucket of popcorn, still chasing the bright taste of synthetic butter and too much salt with more, when his hand brushed up against Ray's. He felt himself flush, hot and quick and blinding, and suddenly, he was flooded with memories of sitting too close and being hidden by the dark, just like this, so many years ago.

He wondered, at that moment, if Ray had ever spent time in the back of a movie theater. In the dark. Like the stereotypical teenager Fraser never was. He was quite sure of it, when he thought about it, because Ray had been with Stella since he was thirteen. Fraser could picture a younger Ray, twined around a small and blonde Stella in the muted light, making out in the theater because it was the only place they could when they were that young.

Ray didn't say anything, and Fraser thought he probably should, except he was afraid that talking might mean losing this. Whatever this bright, small thing might be.

The anticipation flashed through Fraser’s body all week, at the most inopportune times, and it nearly drove him insane. On Friday night, they went to the movies again, and this time, about halfway through, Fraser felt Ray's arm against the top of his seat, and then it came down across his shoulders, the weight heavy and gentle all at the same time. The arm stayed there for the rest of the film, and then Ray pulled away slowly as the credits rolled. They didn't say a word about it afterward, yet again, just made idle chatter about the movie as they left, and Ray took Fraser home. Ray's voice sounded strained as he said goodnight and Fraser stepped out of the car onto the sidewalk. He stood and watched as the car disappeared around the corner, reveling in the memory of the heat of Ray's arm, almost holding him.

It was like that for a while, touching more and more often while they were protected by the dark and the too-loud soundtrack. A hand here, a glance there, but they never spoke of it outside. Outside, it was like nothing that was happening inside the theater was happening at all, like everything was normal, when inside, they were like teenagers dating and waiting for the right moment to make their move. They still solved their cases, like they always had. They had lunch together and watched hockey games on Ray's couch, maintaining a respectable distance from one another. They only touched when they were shielded by the dark, when they couldn't talk about it because someone would shush them if they tried.

Fraser could feel it building, and tried to wait until he had the courage to make the necessary move, because he was so very tired of waiting for someone else to decide it was right, when Fraser could tell it was right, by the way Ray's furtive touches made him feel: like he was unraveling, like a carelessly dropped reel of film.

The pivotal move came, on a night like any other, as Fraser let himself relax into the warm juncture of Ray's arm, with Ray's forearm brushing Fraser's waist every time Ray reached for some more popcorn. The characters on the screen were talking, having an intense conversation, their voices steady and even, and Fraser turned his head, and Ray turned too, and there they were, their eyes locked on each other. Fraser realized that despite the weak light in the theater, he could see Ray perfectly. The corners of Ray's mouth turned up, just slightly, and Fraser wanted to grin back, like a complete idiot, like Ray made him feel, because this was it. Then Ray leaned in and pressed his mouth to Fraser's, softly, almost chastely, but Fraser was done with almost, he was fully and completely done with not quite, so he gripped the back of Ray's neck and, then, like that, it wasn't chaste anymore.

That night, Fraser and Ray drifted out of the theater onto the street, less space between them than they usually had, brushing and touching at almost every opportunity, and when they got into the car, Fraser let himself mold his hand over Ray's on the gearshift as Ray drove the streets to his apartment, not asking if Fraser wanted to go back to the Consulate. Fraser would have said no. He didn't want to go back there. He would have said yes, afterwards. _Yes, Ray, please, I want this. I want the light and the dark and everything._

*****

They still went to the movies, and Ray still let Fraser choose, although Fraser conceded and let Ray take him out to the mall every once in a while to see the latest action film.

Mostly, they continued to go to what Fraser had come to think of as their theater. They went to a lot of movies, but Fraser could honestly say that he hadn't seen a movie lately, not really. Going and seeing were two entirely separate things, Fraser had to admit.

He was becoming intimately acquainted with the back of the theater, the dark inky black of it, the shadows and silence of the corners, and with the feel of Ray's hands on his waist and in his hair. The slick, hot slide of Ray's lips and tongue on his. They spent a great deal of time like that, pulling back from each other every once in a while, breathless, Ray's smile brilliant and open like the first spring sunrise in Inuvik. Fraser could see him, Fraser _knew_ him, and he didn't need any more light for that.


End file.
